He'sStory: Episode Three

D.N.A.S and the babes on our 'berembun' session last Friday.

Dear readers,
I was composing this under the influence of cough syrup, antibiotics, ubat sakit tekak and ubat demam. Please forgive the typo, grammatical errors as well as continuity errors. Although I'm into The L Word again, trust me none of my characters is a lesbo. One more thing, please don't go searching for the Yahoo! IDs, they're all fictitious.

---- Begin episode ------

She had just decided to go and make her third cup of coffee for the day when the phone rang. Reluctantly
she picked it up and heard Adel's voice on the other line.

'Hey, what's up Shereen?' her high pitched voice sounded rather distant.

'Adel! What a surprise. Haven't heard from you ever since like forever!' A sudden jolt of happiness made
Shereen wanted to cry. It has been almost a year she hadn't heard Adel's voice. They used to work in the same department before she decided to apply for a transfer to the company's head office in New York.

'I hope your head is better now,' a shrieking high-pitched laughter could be heard from a few thousand miles away. Shereen hated to admit that she missed that laughter. 'An assignment from H.O is awaiting you. Are you fit enough for a few months of late nights, breakfast-lunch-dinner in the boardroom... well basically no life for a while?' the same question Adel would ask when a big opportunity was coming.

'Hahahahah.... this better be good, dear! Spill it out. I can't wait.' Shereen was suddenly getting excited. Maybe work was therapeutic, the troubling thoughts just vanished.

'The M.D will discuss the details with you via text conference in about 10 minutes' time,' H.O people didn't usually do it over the phone. Not during the most critical stage of chasing an opportunity.

'Our I.M server is currently down, dear.' Shereen suddenly remembered.

'No problem, we'll use YM. As long as we could capture the texts.' Adel was chirpy as she always would have been. Shereen wondered when they'd share some laughter over coffee sessions again.

She was still thinking of Adel when she made coffee in the pantry and felt a pang of hurt remembering the happy moments they've had together, before she decided to work in New York. As she approached her workstation holding the hot coffee cup, she realised she couldn't remember why Adel decided to go to New York in the first place. It almost became another disturbing thought, but she quickly brushed it off. I'll try to remember that part later. For now, let's concetrate on work... work... work... , she thought as she started to launch her Yahoo! Messenger to start the conference with New York office.

In less than 20 seconds later Shereen was thanking God for still remembering her Yahoo! password, but soon after that she was staring at her screen in awe, all the colors left her face. She swore there were more than a hundred lines of offline messages appearing on her YM window just by looking at the size of the right hand scroll bar. Although she was glad seeing familiar IDs asking on her whereabouts and her current conditions, there were messages from two IDs she found quite off topic. Before she could read more, the conference invitation window popped up and she accepted to join.


The conference took more than two hours. Adel and the M.D, George Miller were doing a lot of explanation while Shereen did most of the questionings. Towards the end of the conference Shereen could almost conclude that there will not be much complication to work with the proposed partners since she knew them all and had been going exclusive with some of them in a few projects. The opportunity was going to be a big one, every Tom, Dick and Harry in town would want a piece of the cake. However, Shereen was not having any fear as the company has been established in the country for more than ten years and their reference sites were aplenty both locally and internationally.

'I'm sure they won't be thinking of any other Security Solution partner, George. I'll talk to you guys again, later,' Shereen concluded the conference with a lot of confidence and excitement. Her adrenaline had started flowing with a more steady current then. Finally, a big assignment after a few months of hospital visits, suffering headaches, lying around the house, goofing around in the office and not to forget getting entangled with her own confusions lately.

Then it was time for her to go through the rest of her YM offline messages.

She could recognize Melia's, Adel's and her sister's IDs and their messages. All of them asking why she was still not online after coming back to the office for some time. The messages that were bothering her and later made her shiver were from two ID that she couldn't recall they belonged to whom: retro1817 and geoffgd89. Who could they be? Shereen was reading their messages again and again.

The ones from geoffdg89, among them were:

geoffdg89: I'm here.
geoffdg89: I'm still waiting.
geoffdg89: I will always be here.
geoffdg89: I hope I can still fix it. Pls give me a 2nd chance.

The ones from retro1817 were even more confusing:

retro1817: I think u're still in danger.
retro1817: Be more careful this time.
retro1817: I hope he doesn't know that we know.


After reading that, Shereen was shivering. She fingers were as cold as ice. She was about to dial Melia's number when a YM voice call was initiated, it was Adel.

'Hey, cheapskate... I'm still in the office, you can call me at my Direct Line,' Shereen summoned all her strength to sound normal.

'Oh, I just want you to hear my voice over I.P. I'm bored with conventional stuffs. Haha,' Adel was always lighthearted and humorous. Shereen couldn't described how much she missed her company. 'Actually, I'm calling to remind you to archive all the conversation we had just now, just in case you forgot to.'

'Don't worry, I've archived them all. Will attach that conversation in my first report to Raymond,' Shereen had always been careful and she wouldn't leave a tiny detail out in any of the meeting or conference minutes.

'So, if everything's cool then George and I will set another conference with you after your first meeting with Gamma-01,' that was the company policy. During all electronic conferences; video, voice or text, pseudonyms and codes must be used so as to avoid any information tapping.

'Hey Adel, I need to ask you something.' what was she going to ask? Oh yeah, the two IDs.

'No problem, anything.' Adel was not suspecting anything funny.

'Do you happen to know these 2 Yahoo! IDs, retro1817 and geoffdg89?' Shereen almost choked at her own question. Was the mystery going to be solved soon?

'I have no idea who retro1817 is, but geoffdg89 used to go out with you last year. Don't you remember? Ridzwan Zakaria, the tall Chief Technologist, wavy hair, fair skin, athletic body, working just 3 floors above you?' Bang! Another surprise and Shereen was so not prepared for it.

'Was he my steady boyfriend or what?' she started to sound desperate.

'Well, I must say I thought the both of you were going steady... but sometime in May I heard you broke up with him. You didn't share it with me then, so I have no idea what happened between the two of you,' Shereen could sense that Adel was hoping that she knew more, but by May she was already settled down in New York. 'Perhaps you should ask Melia,' Adel suggested. 'I heard her's was the shoulder you cried on after the break-up,' she added with a cynical tone, but Shereen missed it.

'Oh, OK I will ask her after this. Thanks for the info Adel. Do keep in touch, okay. Hopefully one day we can go for coffee together again,' Shereen really meant it.

'Sure, why not. There are a lot of cool coffee shops here in NY. Call me if you plan to visit.' Adel really meant it too. She had lost her for too long.



---- End Episode ----

###### To be continued lah lagi..... ######